Eddie Izzard and Matt Fitzgerald share a philosophy: you have to believe you can do something before you can do it. Last night I watched ‘Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story’ again just to hear Eddie tell me the following:

You’ve got to believe you can be a standup before you can be a standup. You have to believe you can act before you can act. You have to believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut. You’ve got to believe.
-Eddie Izzard

In his book ‘Run: the mind-body method of running by feel’ Fitzgerald discusses how confidence in your own abilities is key to success as a runner. He says:

If it does nothing else, a runner’s training must make him feel prepared, because if he feels prepared, he is prepared, and if he doesn’t, he isn’t.

He cites examples of coaches inspiring belief in athletes that they can win a race, set a new record, be the best – and them, in turn, going out and doing just that. These beliefs are founded on experience and your understanding of what you can do and what you’ve still got to give.

When I told coaches and other runners at my running club that I was aiming to take 31 minutes off my marathon time this year, none of them said ‘You’ll never do that’. That was lucky for them as I’d have kicked them in the shin and run away to cry if they had. What they did do, however, was raise their eyebrows and say ‘That’s a big improvement’ or similar.

It is a big ask, but I believe I can do it. And this belief, critically, comes from a knowledge of my own ability, a feel for how my body responds to training and a gut intuition that nobody else can feel. Of course, come September I may have been struck down by an illness or we could have freak weather. But that aside, I will be able to run a sub-4 marathon.

I’ll have done the training, seen the results (like the one yesterday where I ran 15 miles at my previous half-marathon pace beating my 13.1 mile time in the process) and I WILL be prepared. And what’s more, I’ll FEEL prepared.